him?"

"Man," replied Phineas, similarly engaged, "all I know is that she has
added him to her collection of ghosts. It's not an over-braw company
for a lassie to live with."

And then, soon afterwards, the trench-broken men stumbled into the
barn to sleep, and all was quiet again, and Jeanne went about her
daily tasks with the familiar hand of death once more closing icily
around her heart.

CHAPTER XVI

The sick-room was very hot, and Aunt Morin very querulous. Jeanne
opened a window, but Aunt Morin complained of currents of air. Did
Jeanne want to kill her? So Jeanne closed the window. The internal
malady from which Aunt Morin suffered, and from which it was unlikely
that she would recover, caused her considerable pain from time to
time; and on these occasions she grew fractious and hard to bear with.
The retired septuagenarian village doctor who had taken the modest
practice of his son, now far away with the Army, advised an operation.
But Aunt Morin, with her peasant's prejudice, declined flatly. She
knew what happened in those hospitals where they cut people up just
for the pleasure of looking at their insides. She was not going to let
a lot of butchers amuse themselves with her old carcass. _Oh non!_
When it pleased the _bon Dieu_ to take her, she was ready: the _bon
Dieu_ required no assistance from _ces messieurs_. And even if she had
consented, how to take her to Paris, and once there, how to get the
operation performed, with all the hospitals full and all the surgeons
at the Front? The old doctor shrugged his shoulders and kept life in
her as best he might.

To-day, in the close room, she told a long story of the doctor's
neglect. The medicine he gave her was water and nothing else--water
with nothing in it. And to ask people to pay for that! She would not
pay. What would Jeanne advise?

"_Oui, ma tante_," said Jeanne.

"_Oui, ma tante?_ But you are not listening to what I say. At the
least one can be polite."

"I am listening, _ma tante_."

"You should be grateful to those who lodge and nourish you."

"I am grateful, _ma tante_," said Jeanne patiently.

Aunt Morin complained of being robbed on all sides. The doctor,
Toinette, Jeanne, the English soldiers--the last the worst of all.
Besides not paying sufficiently for what they had, they were so
wasteful in the things they took for nothing. If they begged for a few
faggots to make a fire, they walked away with the whole woodstack. She